Australian Prime Minister Commits Stunning Indigenous-People Gaffe

Conservative Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott is not unaware of his country’s fraught relationship with its original population; he promised before his 2013 election that he would prioritize issues related to the indigenous Australian people, saying that he’d be a so-called “prime minister for Aboriginal affairs.” But this July he was criticized after saying that the country was “unsettled or, um, scarcely settled” before the arrival of the British, a slip that implied he’d forgotten that native residents counted as people. In other words, Abbott has made a point of highlighting his relationship with the indigenous community—and it’s already a somewhat troubled one. In this context his remarks Thursday, given at an event with British Prime Minister David Cameron in Sydney, are even more incomprehensible than they would be otherwise:

As we look around this glorious city, as we see the extraordinary development, it’s hard to think that back in 1788 it was nothing but bush … the marines and the convicts and the sailors that straggled off those 12 ships just a few hundred yards from where we are now must have thought they’d come almost to the moon.

Here’s the video:

Nothing but bush! Like the moon! Extraordinarily basic! He keeps digging and digging, and it seems like he’s not even speaking off the cuff.